


Weightless

by iniquiticity



Category: Hockey RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Gen, San Jose Sharks, cup-winning fic, teamfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're going to win the Cup, and his hand isn't broken, because you can't play if your hand is broken, and you certainly can't lift a thirty-four pound Cup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weightless

**Author's Note:**

> Remember in '[postseason](http://archiveofourown.org/works/718540)' I sad it was supposed to be 'sharks win the Cup' fic? Here's the actual fic it was supposed to be.

Logan wakes up and aches. Everything hurts, even in dull half-consciousness. His legs burn, his core is cramping, and his arms are sore. His left hand is the worst, actual pain flitting across his mind. He’s almost entirely sure it’s broken, though he hasn’t seen the x-rays to look. Usually no one in the playoffs see their own x-rays, because that way they can keep on believing they aren’t all messed up. 

Luckily, the team doctors have prescribed him some hardcore painkillers. He takes a few when he wakes up and everything settles into something in the background of his mind, not worth paying attention to. This body has to last, because they’re going to win the Stanley Cup tonight. This body has to carry him through one more game and then it can rest. One more game, and then it will lift a thirty-four pound cup, and then it will rest. He makes the promise to himself in the silence. To-Do list: Cup. Sleep. 

With a grunt, he drags himself into the shower and stands under the hot water. This helps, a lot. The hot water pushes out some of his more incessant kinks, even the ones that are persevering despite the painkillers. There’s one in his shoulder which poaching himself like a lobster seems to solve, at least for the time being. Though having a “broken hand” (not actually broken, because if were broken he can’t play, and he needs to play) does lead to some interesting shampoo adventures. He’s pretty sure he still has shampoo in his hair when he finally forces himself to climb out of the shower. 

By now he’s converted the bathroom into a steam room, and he sits naked and dripping on the closed toilet seat, trying to concentrate. Everything in his mind is hockey right now, the sharp sound of skates on ice and the crack of the puck hitting a stick. If he concentrates, he can hear the goal horns of the opposing team forcing the game seven haunting him. He can hear their jeering fans screaming in time with the throbbing of his hand. 

But now they’re in San Jose. Those goal horns will be beautiful and those fans will be screaming his name. He can imagine it if he tries, though he refuses to get ahead of himself. He manages to get some clothes on and into the car, and out at the practice rink for morning skate. 

Morning skate is closed to the public, which is good, because the team is more or less in the same shape as him. Some are worse, and don’t skate at all. Jumbo lays on a table with a trainer fighting with his hip and muttering to himself. (Everyone knows, but doesn’t know, and it’s not official, because then it would be true - that the captain needs hip surgery). Cranky poaches himself in the hot tub that puts his own shower to shame. He passes a shirtless Boyler, who took a shot in the chest and is mostly the color of an abstract painting all over. Burns has six stitches in his lip from where he took a puck to the mouth and is getting a raw, swollen knee wrapped tightly. Logan doesn’t feel that bad about his hand. 

Some of them look better. Niemi looks perfect, despite his workload, despite the intensity, despite the 3 overtimes they played in six games and the goalie playing every minute. There’s a sharpness in his face Logan takes a lot of comfort in. That’s the goalie he wants behind him. Marty Havlat is flying up and down the rink, having been injured enough of the season to not be running on fumes. Little Matty Irwin is playing like he’s been in the league ten years already. Gomer looks hard and serious, everything he’d want in the third line. Ryane seems to have transferred his hockey injuries into fighting wounds, and his swollen face (two black eyes, crooked nose, split lip, cut cheek) is almost comical to look at. Logan skates over to his linemate - not hard or fast, but skating is skating - and grins at him. 

“How’s the hand?” Ryane asks. 

Instead of answering, Logan says, “How’s the face?”

Clowe laughs. He gives Logan a playful, gentle shove and skates off. 

They do drills. Not hard or fast, but they do some drills. Not everyone does drills. Niemi blocks basically all of the shots and shouts trash at them in broken English and Finnish. He clearly and obviously looks the best out of all of them. Logan promises him the Conn Smythe without saying anything. 

They watch some video. Everyone can watch video. Jumbo gives Ryane a hard time over being able to see with his black eyes. Ryane takes it and doesn’t talk about Jumbo’s hip because that injury doesn’t actually exist if no one acknowledges it. If it doesn’t exist then Jumbo can play, and 8 assists (and 2 goals) in 6 games means he’s going to play. 

They all go back home for nap and lunchtime. Logan gets a giant hamburger and then drinks a protein shake and crashes back into his bed. He dreams of hockey, of lifting the Cup. He imagines what that weight might feel like in his hands, what he might feel like lifting it. He dreams of Jumbo, sweaty and weak, lifting it with strength he didn’t previously have. He dreams of drinking out of it and how sweet it will be. 

Mostly he dreams of exhaustion, which is more or less like staring at a burnt-out TV. The images have long since been engraved into the black screen, but they’re at best echoes of the real pictures, and the tv doesn’t go on or change. His exhaustion-dreams are punctuated by low notes of pain and ache, and he keeps his hand close to himself, imagining the x-ray of his hand burnt onto that tv, splits and fractures evident without a medical degree. 

The alarm wakes him up. He’s slept four hours on top of the eight he got last night on the plane, and everything still hurts. He takes more painkillers and stares out the window at San Jose. He tries to imagine where the parade will be, what it will look like. Tries to feel more like the hockey player on the float that he is and not the stomped, old confetti afterwards. 

He drives to HP Pavilion, and when he gets there the adrenaline begins to pump. It starts slow when he idly watches the cop cars outside with the police barriers. The homeless scalpers. He takes a breath and thinks about how good the Cup will look being paraded past the palm trees. 

The locker room smells like sweat and used pads and it’s one of the more wonderful scents there could be right now. Soon, he’ll be wearing those pads and playing hockey and sweating. He’ll be disgusting and drenched and hot and fighting for air. He’ll be lifting the Cup with strength he doesn’t have. 

They watch video. Coach is trying not to look excited but Logan can tell, the way he moves, his animated gestures, his ferocious pointing and jabbing at the screen. Woodcroft is pacing around like a lunatic. Larry Robinson, who has a Cup or two already, is waiting, staring with his arms crossed. Everyone looks intense. Logan thinks he might also look that intense, eyes dark with focus. 

They all have one goal. They are bees in a hive right now. They need to have one mind. 

He sits next to Ryane, who pats his thigh as a hello. Jumbo sits down next to Patty and starts talking to him about a play he’s devising. Nemo is playing teacher for the D, writing on a whiteboard and pointing. That conversation has snatches of too many languages for Logan to understand at once. 

They gear up. It’s slow going because they’re crippled, unofficially, not really. The trainers flutter around and feed people more painkillers. One grins at him and pulls out a syringe that Logan might hide from if he had space in his mind for anything besides hockey. 

“This should last you for the game.” the trainer says, and injects his hand. The fingers go loose and a little numb.

“Thanks,” he replies, clenching and unclenching his hand. It feels more like a tentacle now than anything else. Grasping might be a slight problem, but he’s going to play hockey. Plus, he has a good hand, so this one isn’t all that important. He tests it by wrapping his hand around his stick. 

It’ll do. No worse than last game or two games ago, after all. He gears up and feels the adrenaline notch up at least five or six levels. Underarmor first. Then pads. Socks. Skates. Tape on skates. Elbowpads. 

He notices his hands are shaking. When he looks up around the locker room, everyone is shaking. Maybe not like this, but there’s an energy here that he can taste. An energy that makes him not hurt, that makes him not tired, that makes him not sore. An energy that makes him feel powerful and fast and hard and sharp. It clears the fog in his head the way the sun burns off the fog in the city in the morning. 

He takes a deep breath and pulls on his jersey. The fabric feels good against his pads and skin, slightly rough. When he looks down at it, he’s struck by the color, maybe for the first time. Sure he’s a Shark, and he’s more than proud of it, and damn does he love this team - but maybe for the first time he stares at the vicious logo and thinks about it. Being here, doing this. Being part of this team. He looks around. They’re all wearing the same logo, the same color. His team. Coach even has a teal paisley tie on, and a Sharks logo pin pinned below his American flag. He touches the black shark biting the hockey stick on his own jersey and tries to remember to breathe. It’s getting harder, with all the gear on. With this coming. The most important game of his life. 

The trainer comes over and wraps his hand tightly. “Good luck out there,” he says. “You got this.” 

“Yeah,” Logan says, nodding with intent. The trainer helps him get his glove on around the bandage so it only hurts a little. He wants to ask how much it is going to hurt when he lifts the Cup, but he knows the answer is going to be _Not at all._

Coach makes a speech. It’s a playoff-worthy speech, about fight and heart and pushing through and it’s almost over and they just need one more and they deserve this. They don’t just deserve it, they need it, and it’s theirs for the taking. They’ve done everything right. They’re here at home in San Jose, playing hockey in a rink surrounded by palm trees, and this is theirs. Listening to his coach’s passive voice rise with passion and ferocity and desire - he wants it as much as they do, and he knows it - makes Logan antsy to get out there. 

And then Jumbo makes a speech. He’s never really been the speech-making type, and when he stands to talk he moves stiffly, not-quite-limping (not limping at all, he’s not injured), and there‘s a slight slur in his speech that everyone ignores. Easy to ignore, after all, because people who don’t hurt don’t talk like that, and Jumbo isn’t hurt. 

Like McLellan before him, Jumbo gains steam as he speaks. Logan isn’t really listening to the words, too nervous to get out and play, but he can hear the way the captain talks. The fire there, barely restrained. The hunger to win he’s always admired in the older man. The knowledge that they’re more than capable, that they can do this, that last night was pointless and today is the real day. 

Jumbo holds his hands wide and mimes grabbing something thin on each side but big and heavy, and Logan can almost see the big silver cup in his grasp, all their names beaten into it. 

“Put it in my hands, and I’ll give it all to you,” he promises. “Nothing I want more and you all know it.” Somebody cheers - Desi, maybe, and then someone else and before long they’re all whooping and roaring. 

They all stand up and begin the walk down the corridor. Logan tries to remember to breathe. It’s never been this hard before, not while his gear feels so light and everyone is looking at each other knowing what they’re going into. As they get closer to the rink, he can hear the crowd. 

The crowd sounds amazing. Sure they were loud previously, but not like this, a roar that Logan can barely understand. It’s like a wave of power wrapping around him and pushing him forward, as if someone looked at his current adrenaline level (meter broken with overload) and pushed it further and further until he can almost not see straight. He can’t tell what they’re saying, but they’re achingly, wonderfully, beautiful loud, deafening him immediately. He can see Cranky’s lips moving next to him but can’t hear the sound coming out of the big Swedish defenseman’s mouth. 

Doesn’t matter. He and Ryane and Marty have been communicating on a level beyond something as dumb as the spoken word. Jumbo and Patty have never needed to see or talk to each other (the no-look drop pass from Game 2 floats across his mind). When you get this far, you’re beyond talking. Beyond pain and mortality and being human. He feels like some kind of superhero, and when his skates touch the ice nothing hurts, and he’s flying in warmup circles, and surrounding them is the scream of 17,562 fans who want it every bit as much as they do. 

He’s in the starting lineup, has been for a few games now. There’s the sound of his name across the PA loudspeaker, and then everyone roars for him. That feeling of knowing he’s being cheered for is impossible to match. They’re screaming because they remember his first-period goal in Game 6 and the first goal of the series that he scored in the second period in Game 1. They’re screaming because they believe in him, and they know he can do it. And if they know, he knows. 

Ryane and Marty are on his line, with Boyler and Irwin at D. Nemo, of course, is in the net. Logan thinks they yell loudest for Nemo, and then they roar his name.

_Ne-mo Ne-mo Ne-mo Ne-mo_

The goalie has always been both reserved and intense, hampered by the language barrier. He wonders if Niemi is soaring on the wings of his screamed name like he does. He wonders if this is what it was like when he carried the Blackhawks on his padded shoulders all the way to the Cup. The Cup which he is going to lift with his hand that doesn’t hurt, and stare at, and kiss, and drink out of. The Cup that he is going to watch Jumbo heft over his head and roar. 

The game is furious and sharp and painful and gives the impression that everyone is being buoyed by something else - by the taste, just a hint, of that championship. He skates to center. Brad Richards stares at him. Logan knows that stare, pain banished far away, all adrenaline and rush and victory. That stare thinks it can win. He knows better. 

They play viciously. Bodies crash together. Flesh is thrown in front of frozen rubber. The sound of people smashing against the boards is constant. The playoff habit of not calling penalties makes the whole game destructive. The screaming fans eat it up and scream louder and harder, booing and cheering appropriately, screaming when Jumbo takes a high stick in the mouth. Michael Del Zotto goes to the box. Jumbo spits out his tooth and grins bloody. 

They score. It’s Ryane, from him and Patty. He sees it before Ryane does, closer to the net, notices before anyone (besides Lundqvist) that it’s trickled past the goalie. He screams and drops his stick and practically jumps into Ryane’s arms, who embraces him with one hand and gets Patty with the other. Vlasic and Pavs complete the set and the way the tank sounds is like a Hallelujah chorus. Their choreographed _Hey!_ ’s have never sounded so sweet in his ears. 

_Sharks score! His 3rd of the postseason, scored by number 29, Ryane Clowe!_

He’s deafened by the screams. 

_Assisted by number 39, Logan Couture!_  

How beautiful does his name sound there. 

_And number 12, Patrick Marleau!_

The fans don’t calm down when play resumes. Logan doesn’t calm down either, almost laughing as the Rangers smash into him, trying to keep the puck off his stick. But it’s there like glue and Logan knows it, and so does Derek Stepan on top of him, and so does Cranky, who puts the kind of hit on Carl Hagelin that even takes his own breath away. 

The Rangers even it up later, against a tired fourth line, caught up on an icing call. When they score and scream, Logan can actually hear them from the bench. For a second at least, because then there are boos, hard and sharp, and Logan wants to laugh again. They’ll win. This goal means nothing. This team means nothing. None of these stupid players in their red-white-blue mean anything. 

He gets thrown onto the ice with Ryane and Jumbo now, and Dan Girardi forechecks him furiously. This would otherwise be all right, because he puts his hands out to protect himself from hitting the boards too hard. Only Girardi crosschecks him in the back again, and his body smashes against his hand and crushes it against the boards, and the pain is not something Logan would believe if he was told. The pain takes his breath away and makes him forget that he has feet, and legs, and anything other than badly sliding and fractured bones. Before he knows it, he’s staring at the ice, about an inch from his nose. He can see drops of water leaving him and dropping onto the ice but nothing else, only his legs where he’s curled them around himself. His head has gone shock white and dead black. Suddenly, there is no such thing as hockey, and there is no such thing as the Cup or this game or the Sharks or any of his team. There is only a power line hooked directly into his wrist that someone has turned on without necessary precautions. 

“Cooch?” Coach is asking, from somewhere far away. He stares at nothing and hunches close. He wonders what his hand looks like right now, what that X-Ray he never saw revealed. 

“Logan?” Someone else asks. It’s a trainer. He has hands and feet. Well, feet and a hand, and one mess of agony. And he’s a hockey player, and they’re playing hockey, except the place has the silence of a twenty thousand whispering voices. He’s surrounded by people. 

“Hi,” he manages, voice hoarse. 

“The hand?” Coach asks. He manages a weak nod and holds it tighter. “Let’s get you off the ice.”

The ice. Off the ice? It takes his pain-blurred mind a few moments to figure out what those words mean before they start setting off bells in his head. He can’t go off the ice. He can’t go to the dressing room. He can’t sit out for this. He can’t not be here, with this linemates and his team and the fans. 

“No,” he says, and one-handedly staggers to his feet. Somehow, the crowd knows to begin to shout as he stands, the volume rising hopefully as he gets his skates under him. By the time he’s up on both feet they’re jumping up and down and banging on the glass near his head and shouting, and as his brain begins to clear he picks up the words. 

_Lo-gan Cou-ture_ (clapclap clapclapclap) _Lo-gan Cou-ture_ (clapclap clapclapclap). 

He can’t go off the ice for these people who scream for him. 

“No?” The trainer says, and looks at Coach, and then at Ryane and Jumbo, who’ve both appeared out of what might have been nowhere. “Your hand is a mush of bones and tissue right now. You’re out.” 

“No,” says Logan, gaining strength. He picks up his stick with his other hand. “I just need another shot and I’ll be fine.” 

“Dressing room, Cooch,” Coach says, in his no-nonsense voice. Logan knows better than to talk back to that, especially in this daze where everything is instinct, so he skates off to the incomprehensible din of the fans shouting his name. He wants to promise them he’ll be back but they wouldn’t hear him and that’s just the way he likes it. 

They do more x-rays on his hand and don’t show him. He stares longingly towards the ice. In the complex, all he can hear is the roaring crowd. He’s not sure if he can hear the goal horn from here. His memory doesn’t stretch back into games that don’t matter, through the cold winter and mild spring. 

“Good news,” one trainer says, eventually. “You can’t possibly make this any worse, but I’m going to be really interested in how you can hold a hockey stick.” 

Logan takes a while to filter through this. 

“I can play,” he says. 

“Sure, after you’re doped up on painkillers.” 

Logan doesn’t complain. When he steps back onto the ice it feels like he has one hand and a tentacle for upper limbs, and like the trainer said, holding a hockey stick in two hands becomes a challenging task. Some might call it interesting. Some might call it pathetic. 

The roar of the fans picks up unexpectedly, and he only needs to manage a glance to see the jumbotron is showing him back on the bench. He wants to wave, wants to reach out and hug them all individually, wants to explain in great detail that he is not hurt and there is no injury, but there’s a game to win. 

Coach drops him to the third line. He doesn’t complain. 

The Rangers score another goal, and the period ends. They have 30 minutes to score two goals. 

More than doable. 

The intermission is them resting. His hand gets more attention, everyone gets extra painkillers, and he can hear is _30 more minutes, 2 more goals_ being muttered by everything, from Nemo to McLellan, from Jumbo and Patty talking on low voices to Burish still kicking himself for letting the Rangers score at all. Ryane sits next to him - he hasn’t gotten into a fight yet this game but there’s still plenty of time - and looks exhilarated.  


 

“You gonna live?” He asks. 

“30 minutes,” he replies. He’s not thinking about his hand or the game as a whole. This is all that’s life. That’s all they need, all they have. Nothing else matters. Not his body, not the Rangers, not his screaming legs or codeine-melted hand. “Two more goals. Then I can die.” 

Ryane pats him on the shoulder and laughs. “You’re the fucking man, Cooch,” he says. 

They go back on the ice and Logan lets himself fall into the screaming fans and their cheers and the way his skates slide on the new surface and the rush of teal-white-black around him. He looks over to Nemo, who nods at him. He nods back. Nemo has done his job as best he could. Now it’s their turn. 

Thornton takes the faceoff against Brad Richards and wins and they’re off. And it’s harder now, meaner and faster, completed checks and people crashing into the boards and staggering back up. Logan’s high on the ferocity, on the viciousness, on the things the Rangers say to them and they shout back (even though he can’t hear them - he knows, they all know). Cranky puts an open-ice hipcheck on Nash that sends the tank (and the players) into a frenzy, and half the Ranger team piles on the d-man, and they’re all there, even black-and-blue Boyler and crippled-hip Jumbo and one-handed himself. It takes a while for things to settle - which means they never do, Jumbo growling at Callahan and Nash, who looks perfectly healthy (but likely isn’t, like they are, perfectly healthy) hissing something that sends Pavs into a barely-controlled rage. Pavs hits him too hard and goes off for the penalty still spitting nails. 

They kill it but it’s close, hectic in front of the net, the collective breath of the tank held and gasped out, a choir of ‘ooooh!’ and roaring cheers. They increase with pitch as the Rangers crowd into the blue paint and Nemo shoves them out, one after another, pushing one of the guys flat on his face on the ice and reaching, impossibly far to his right, to catch the puck for a faceoff. When they snowshower him (as they inevitably do), Braun shoves at them and checks for refs before he lays as many sharp elbows into as many Rangers as they can manage. 

They score shorthanded. It’s a bad pass from the Rangers, one that Vlasic intercepts in the middle of the ice, turning as sharp as he can manage to head back up towards the Rangers goal. Pickles isn’t fast under normal circumstances but this is different, and everyone knows, and even the defenseman’s body understands that this is different, that he needs to be fast, that they need this. He finds an unknown burst of speed into the offensive zone. He’s there alone, or at least it seems that way, and then Cranky comes out of nowhere from behind him. It must look like an easy and regular and perfect 2-on-1 to the fans, the way Vlasic dekes Lundqvist out of the net like he’s some rookie, like he’s not in contention for the Venzina, because somehow it seems that way. The king falls for the ploy and Murray, of all people, lays it in easy, shouting something in Swedish that makes Lundqvist’s face twist in pure, unadulterated rage. The size difference is big enough that Vlasic _can_ actually jump into Cranky’s arms, and Murray hugs him and lets himself be surrounded by the yelling forwards (Patty and Handzus) and the Logan continues to be impressed by how the place always seems to be getting louder. If someone hasn’t hurled themselves onto the ice in joy he’ll be surprised. 

The clock ticks. 10 minutes. Logan needs more eyes to stare at the videoboard and the game and the fans and McLellan, who is shouting himself hoarse at plays and uncalled penalties and missed passes and bad offsides. Logan likes how the fans think their coach is so reserved and even. Now he’s as insane as the rest of them. 

8 minutes. 

4 minutes. 

3 minutes. 

Logan isn’t opposed to overtime but he wants the Cup achingly badly, aching in his hand and his legs and his chest and his head. Everything hurts. 

They score. They score because Jumbo is there, and of course Jumbo scores it, because he’s the captain, their captain and their king, their rock and their vicious and protective leader, the master behind the net and king of passes and assists. They score because he’s playing, because he can read the puck like no one else. They score because Jumbo knows Patty without talking or looking, without seeing or yelling or making any indication. Patty just leaves the drop-pass there and goes to the net, flattening himself up in front of Lundqvist to take as much space as he can, to screen the goalie and be there for a tip-in. 

Pavs is there too, lingering just outside the blue paint, not quite fighting with the Swedish goalie - his battle is with Marc Staal, and even without all the goalie padding they fight just as hard. But there’s no deflection, no scramble for the puck, no fighting or stick-handling or anything sharp. Jumbo just takes the drop-pass and scores, top-shelf over Lundqvist’s left shoulder. Logan isn’t thinking about how this is uncharacteristic of his captain to shoot first and ask questions later, or how beautiful the shot was, or how perfect the alignment was, Patty’s screen and Pavs’ distraction of Staal and Burns fighting off Nash to keep him out of the play. All he thinks about is that they’re winning, they got the goal, they got the goal, _they got the goal they got the goal they got the goal they’re winning with 2 minutes to go and_

Coach throws him onto the ice with his line, and in response Tortarella throws out three people they haven’t played against at all this game. One of them goes straight at Ryane and Logan backs off and Ryane, looking up at the guy who Logan doesn’t know (#45) and flings his gloves off as dramatically as he can, then dumps his helmet and shakes off his elbowpads. Logan can see that his linemate can’t disguise the giant, shit-eating smile stretched across his mouth and twinkling in his bruised eyes. His wrecked face makes it look even more comical. Logan skates to the bench with Havlat, Vlasic and Boyler. 

The Rangers’ fighter’s name is Asham according to his jersey, and while he is sporting one nice shiner, he clearly doesn’t have the experience in recent postseason brawls that Ryane does. Even moreso, Ryane’s unrestrained smile is likely infuriating him further. This is going to be good one and the fans are chanting _Ry-ane Clowe! Ry-ane Clowe! Ry-ane Clowe!_

He finds himself chanting it, then hears Marty and Jumbo on the bench, then Greiss. Soon they’re all screaming as Ryane matches punches with the guy. They’re both making solid contact, all offense and no defense, and Ryane’s nose is bleeding profusely, leaving drops of blood on his jersey and where they skate. Asham hasn’t gotten off easy either, a cut where Ryane’s knuckle made contact with his cheekbone and one eye swelling. 

They’re at an angle where Logan can see Ryane say something that sends Asham into a fit of rage, throwing a flailing right hook. Ryane dodges like he was expecting, grabs Asham’s jersey, then more or less throws them both to the ground. He ends up on top of the other player and laughing, settling down as the refs help them both up. Ryane holds his bleeding nose with one hand and flips his hair out of his face to the roars of the crowd, then skates easily into the tunnel. There he stands, waiting to come back out, waiting to be part of the mess that will be them. 

Tortarella pulls Lundqvist from the net and the Rangers push forward, desperate and needing and going to lose, going to lose and they’re going to win. They’re going to win. _They’re going to win._

Gomez ends up on the line with him and Marty, flying hot and fast with them, taking and dishing out the puck. All that matters is they protect, eat the puck with their bodies and their stick, and watching Nemo do what he does is a work of art. Watching the goalie’s hands and feet fly up, and at some point Nemo actually _jumps_ under fifty pounds of goalie padding and the puck bounces off his facemask and onto the ice behind the net. 

There’s the sound of the horn. There’s the sound of the horn blaring and the game is over. The game is over, and they won, and that means they won the Cup, and _that means they won the Cup._

They’re a mess of hockey players on the ice, a pile of screaming injured human beings (now they’re injured, now it hurts, now they can’t play) all shaking and maybe crying and realizing that this is the dream. The dream that Logan had when he was four years old and watching on TV. The dream that Logan had when he was fifteen and playing in school, and in travel teams, and in the draft, and in the ECHL, and those long and horrible bus rides at 3 AM, and playing his first NHL game. 

It was because of this. Ryane has picked him up and spun him around, his face bleeding again, ragged and laughing. Burns has acquired the ridiculously large ‘SHARKS WIN’ banner-flag from somewhere and is skating it in wide circles around the rink. When Logan manages to get his face out of Ryane’s blood-and-sweat-soaked jersey, he notices probably ten or fifteen fans have jumped from their seats into the corridor leading into their dressing room and are staggering around on the ice, running from security. Even the coaches are on the ice, quietly whooping and high-fiving, hugging and trying not to look too excited. 

The best thing, though, is when Patty and Jumbo skate from from behind Niemi and pick him up, lugging him and all the gear onto their shoulders. Jumbo almost crumbles but resists, doing a one-legged skating sort of thing, Patty shouldering most of the weight. Nemo hoists his mask into the air and the crowd screams his name and professes it’s eternal love. 

They stop screaming, eventually. They have to, because this is the moment they’ve been dreaming and waiting for. The moment Logan has worked his entire life to have. 

They roll out the carpet. The fans boo, almost comically, for Bettman. Logan doesn’t care. Logan is only concentrating on the giant silver cup that is brought out, staring at it. It’s belongs to them. It’s for them and no one else. He can’t see anything besides the Cup, can’t hear them speaking over the fans. Jumbo is waiting, antsy and standing funny, needing to touch it. Waiting to hoist it over his head and scream, take one victory lap around and feeling the weight of it seep through him. He looks like he wants to tell Bettman to shut the fuck up and give up the cup already. 

But he doesn’t. Instead he waits, and Bettman explains in his dull voice, that it is great honor to present the Stanley Cup to Joe Thornton, Captain of the Stanley Cup-winning San Jose Sharks. 

Is there anything more beautiful than watching your captain skate around with the Cup above his head? 

Logan doesn’t think so. 

Patty gets it, and Boyler, and Ryane, and Nemo, and then Pavs - and then him. 

It is heavy, when Pavs gives it to him. But not that heavy, and seemingly not heavy at all when he hefts it above his head and screams. 

It doesn’t hurt his hand one bit. It’s like he was never injured at all.  
 

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: I don't know the Rangers lines. Also, I haven't watched the two Cup-winning ceremonies (Fuck Boston and LA), so sorry if this is totally inaccurate. I don't care! Nyah.


End file.
